The invention relates to an apparatus for automatically mounting substrates with medical and/or pharmaceutical and/or food-supplementing products, comprising at least one magazine for storing blister strips rolled up on rolls or the like, each magazine having at least one holding position for the rolls, and a delivery device for unrolling the blister strips and delivering the unrolled blister strips to a supply position for the products to be mounted being provided for each roll in the magazine, and a mounting head which can be controlled by a control system for transporting the products from the supply position to a dispensing position on the substrate.
Furthermore, the invention concerns a system for automatically manufacturing packaging for medical and/or pharmaceutical and/or food-supplementing products, comprising a transport unit for transporting substrates and the like through the whole system, a gluing station for applying hot-melt adhesive or the like to the substrates as well as an apparatus for mounting the substrates with medical and/or pharmaceutical and/or food-supplementing products.
Apparatuses and systems of this kind are used in the pharmaceutical and/or packaging industry to assemble individual packaging units from products. Such packages are e.g. adapted to certain treatment processes. In other words, each package is assembled individually.
This requires high expenditure on logistics and control. Furthermore, in the manufacture of packages for medical and/or pharmaceutical and/or food-supplementing products there are various, sometimes official requirements and conditions, e.g. of a health, safety or other type, the implementation of which means considerable expenditure (e.g. creating superclean-room conditions, high personnel costs, etc.).
It is quite normal in hospitals, old people's homes and care homes, etc. to manually assemble the packaging units individual to the patient, in which the products, namely drugs etc. lie loosely adjacent to each other. In other words, the products necessary for the respective administration time are then kept together in a shell, a nest or the like. This procedure or this principle of course has the advantage that all products to be taken at the respective administration time are located adjacent to each other, which allows an extremely high packing density and therefore relatively small packaging units, as there is only one shell or one nest for each administration time. Furthermore, with this principle, with just one operation of pressing out the shell or nest, all the products contained therein can be removed. The procedure described also means, however, that the products are released or unpacked from the package. In addition to the problem of cross-contamination, this method of manufacture is not only very time- and personnel-intensive. Manual assembly of the products individual to the patient also increases the risk of mistakes in mounting, which can under certain circumstances lead to unwanted side effects. A further drawback lies in that automatic monitoring can be carried out only with difficulty or not at all.
To automate a mounting operation, from the state of the art are known basically different types of apparatuses for mounting, so-called automatic mounting machines, which however are usually designed for assembling electronic components for printed circuit boards or the like. In the pharmaceutical and/or packaging industry, however, in the manufacture of treatment-specific and/or patient-individual packages it is also desirable and increasingly also necessary for automation to be carried out.
Thus from WO 2005/102841 A1 is known a system for automatically mounting packaging units of drugs. This system is distinguished by the fact that the products (capsules, tablets, dragées, etc.) are deposited specifically for a patient in holding compartments arranged in rows and columns, wherein several products are located directly adjacent and against each other in each compartment. WO 2005/102841 A1 retains the principle described above of manual mounting with a plurality of different products in a single shell or a single nest for each administration time, and increases the efficiency of this principle by carrying it out in automated fashion. The actual apparatus for filling the compartments includes for each product an output station. Between rolls on which the products are rolled up as strip blisters and the output stations is provided a transverse conveyor which ensures transport of the strip blisters into the region of the output station. The output stations are assigned ejector units by means of which the products are pushed out of the strip blisters. In other words, the products are subjected to direct mechanical stress and conveyed unprotected into the holding compartments. The disadvantage of this system is firstly the fact that there is the risk of cross-contamination because several identical or different products are pushed into the holding compartments. Secondly there are basic hygiene problems because the mechanical stresses necessary when pushing out the products lead to abrasion of the products which remain in the apparatus. As a result, the risk of cross-contamination is further increased. A further drawback lies in that this system has very high space requirements, because for each product a pressing-out station with associated ejector unit is necessary, which are all arranged in a row.